August Wilhelm von Schlegel

First published Thu Jan 14, 2010

A.W. Schlegel (Sept. 8, 1767, Hanover – May 12, 1845, Bonn)
was a German essayist, translator and poet. Although the philosophical
dimension and profundity of his writings remain underrated, he is
considered to be one of the founders of the German Romantic Movement,
as well as one of the most prominent disseminators of its philosophy,
not only in Germany but also abroad and, most notably, in Britain.

Schlegel had an outstanding knowledge of art, history, literature,
architecture, anthropology and foreign languages, which made him a
decisive figure in the early development of comparative literature and
modern linguistics, and with the creation of the journal Indische
Bibliothek, he inaugurated the domain of Sanskrit studies in
Germany. He also wrote poetry and drama; but he is mostly known for his
critical writings and his brilliant translations of William
Shakespeare.

A.W. Schlegel was son of the Lutheran pastor and hymn writer Johann
Adolf Schlegel. In 1787 he began his studies at the University of
Göttingen, starting in theology and later changing to classical
philology and aesthetics. He worked as a private teacher in Amsterdam
and returned to Jena in 1796 to work as a literary critic, where he
joined important artists and philosophers such as Novalis, Ludwig Tieck
and F.W.J. Schelling. In the same year, he married Caroline Michaelis,
who encouraged him and also participated in his project to translate
Shakespeare's plays.

In 1798, tired of the publishing difficulties they endured within
the existing literary journals, A.W. Schlegel and his brother Friedrich
Schlegel founded the famous periodical Athenaeum. They were
both the editors and the main writers of this journal, which would
offer an alternative to mainstream classicist approaches in literary
criticism and which was soon to become one of the German Romantic
Movement's principal voices. The Athenaeum was devoted
mainly to literary criticism with a philological and historical
perspective, and a large section of it featured the review of
contemporary literature. It contained critical essays, fragments,
letters, announcements and dialogues and appeared twice a year between
1798 and 1800.

In that same year, 1798, A.W. Schlegel was named extraordinary
professor at Jena University, where he continued his translation of the
works of Shakespeare (1797–1810). Schlegel was remarkably
talented as a translator; he translated over 16 Shakespearean plays,
five plays from the Spanish dramaturge Calderón de la Barca, and
other selected pieces from Dante, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Miguel
de Cervantes, Torquato Tasso, and Luís de Camões which
were published in 1804 as Blumensträusse italiänischer,
spanischer, und portugiesischer Poesie, (Bouquets of Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese Poetry).

In 1801 Schlegel went to Berlin, where he lectured on literature and
art. Both his Jena (1798–1799) and his Berlin lectures (1801–1804) were
highly didactic while at the same time interspersed with important
philosophical insights. So, as well as providing a comprehensive vision
of the history of European literature, poetry and mythology, Schlegel
presented a new critical and philosophical approach to art and its
history. Some of these lectures were published in literary journals,
until 1884 when they were posthumously collected as Vorlesungen
über philosophische Kunstlehere (Lectures on
Philosophical Art Education) and Vorlesungen über
schöne Literatur und Kunst (Lectures on Fine Art and
Literature) respectively. Four years later, Schlegel delivered in
Vienna another series of lectures elaborating upon some of the ideas he
had already developed in his previous work. A literal transcription of
these was published between 1809 and 1811 as Vorlesungen über
dramatische Kunst und Literatur (A Course of Lectures on
Dramatic Art and Literature). A more extended version of his
Course of Lectures… was published in an 1816 edition:
by that time, they had already been translated into English, French,
Dutch and Italian and had obtained a wide circulation. This success
facilitated the dissemination of the fundamental ideas underlying the
Romantic Movement throughout Europe, and helped to solidify Schlegel's
influence and reputation as a critic.

After his divorce from Caroline Michaelis, who left him for his
friend the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling, he embarked upon a
relationship with Mme. de Stäel; he became tutor of her children
and was her constant companion on her travels in Germany, Italy, France
and Sweden until her death in 1817. In August 1818 he married Sophie
Paulus in Heidelberg, but they only remained together for a few weeks.
Sophie never accompanied him to Bonn.

In 1818 A.W. Schlegel became professor of literature and art history
in Bonn, where he published the scholarly journal Indische
Bibliothek (1820–1830) and set up a Sanskrit printing press with
which he provided the first printed editions of the
Bhagavadgītā (1823) and Rāmāyana
(1829) in continental Europe. He died in 1845.

An anthology of some of A.W. Schlegel's critical essays,
selected by the author himself, was published in Berlin in 1828.
Despite his opposition to the publication of the rest of his essays,
A.W. Schlegel's collected works were edited by E. Böcking
and published in 16 volumes between 1846 and 1848. His complete
lectures were edited by E. Behler in 1989, and his letters were edited
by J. Körner and published in 1930.

Schlegel's lectures show his commitment as a professor,
combining high intellectual standards with an appealing and interesting
approach. His aphorisms are sagacious in both form and content, but his
style seems to lose its boldness and wittiness after the
Athenaeum period, gaining perhaps in depth and erudition.
Critics of Schlegel's literary writings (Gedichte, 1800;
Ion, 1803; Poetische Werke, 1811) tend to stress
their formal perfection, but also justify his presumable lack of
success as a poet. Other scholars, however, speak of the considerable
achievement of his play Ion and the German poet Heinrich Heine
refers to him as “the poetic genius” (Heine, 56). Overall
A.W. Schlegel's writings are prolific in quantity and in a
certain sense remain rather unfocused and repetitive. This could be due
to the fact that many of the essays Schlegel had decided not to publish
were printed after his death. As Schlegel himself had often regretted,
by taking too many different topics into consideration, his work lost
the intensity of its philosophical and critical insights.

Critics have also pointed out that, as a literary critic, A.W.
Schlegel is more empirical and less philosophical than his brother
Friedrich Schlegel (Welleck, 72–73). Contemporary scholars have even
questioned his being the genuine creator of the ideas laid out in his
writings and lectures. But however theoretically convincing the
distinction between having created the ideas as opposed to
merely having disseminated them may seem, this is in actual
fact quite disputable. It was A.W. Schlegel's lectures, with
their particular view of world literature as an organic whole, that
were to influence many authors; amongst the most prominent of whom was
S. T. Coleridge as well as the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling.

Throughout his lectures and essays, A.W. Schlegel praised the plays
of Shakespeare and Calderón to the detriment of French
Neoclassical theatre. Although this was part of a systematic and
organic comprehension of art and art history, his harsh attack on
classical rules considered sacred by French critics predisposed the
latter to react hostilely (especially with the publication of the
polemical Comparaison entre la Phèdre de Racine et celle
d'Euripide, in 1807), whilst it favored the approval of English
reviewers. In fact, the rediscovery of Shakespeare's greatness in
the 19th century was due, not only to Schlegel's
translations, but most importantly to his special approach to
Shakespearean theatre. Instead of comparing Shakespeare to ancient
Tragedy, as if it were a bad copy, Schlegel claimed it should be
analyzed on the grounds of constituting a necessary historical
difference. This difference – the difference between the ancients
and the modern – was the cornerstone of Schlegel's critique
and set the basis for his theoretical use of the concept
Romantic, which became the key-concept in his comprehension
and reevaluation of modernity.

In the preface to his critical essays (Kritische Schriften,
Berlin, 1828) Schlegel explains how many of the
‘revolutionary’ ideas he had formerly defended in his
essays and lectures had been internalized and normalized by those very
critics who had once rejected them with contempt. A.W. Schlegel's
response to this was modest: he said, he had just been able to foresee
the coming shift of taste and evaluative parameters in the
understanding and the interpretation of works of art (KS, I,
vi)[1].

It is widely accepted that the Romantic Movement in Germany emerged,
on the one hand, as a reaction against the aesthetical ideals defended
in Classicism and Neoclassicism, and on the other, as a deviation from
the rational principles of the Enlightenment with the consequent
regression to the irrational spirit of the Middle Ages. However, some
scholars maintain that the Romantic Movement should be seen as a
radicalization, and not a rejection, of Weimar Classicism
(Behler, 1992, 43). Certainly, in some of his essays, A.W. Schlegel
offered a harsh critique of Friedrich Schiller, who had been regarded,
together with Goethe, as the founding father of Weimar Classicism; but
this rivalry seemed to involve more than just strictly philosophical
issues.

It would be impossible to ascribe the original conception of the
Romantic aesthetical and philosophical precepts to one author alone.
Despite the emphasis the Romantics laid on the individual artist and
his/her genius and originality, the conceptualization of the Romantic
Movement itself is essentially a collective work. This is most evident
in what has been considered to be the organ of the Romantic Movement,
the Athenaeum: there were two editors, several writers and a
diversity of opinions, but one unifying principle (A, I, vi). And yet,
most commentators credit A.W. Schlegel for having given the word
‘romantic’ a systematic significance from the very
beginning (Furst, 84). In contrast with other literary critics who used
the term in contradictory and erratic ways, Schlegel believed it was
important to transmit a clear-cut understanding of the term and
“to elevate it again to its true signification” (LDA, 441).
Indeed his purpose was to foster a solid movement that should become
the symbol of modernity and Germany.

Schlegel's philosophical analysis of art and the artist were
inspired by his reading of Kant, Fichte, Goethe, Schiller and Schelling
among others, but he developed his own poetology. In the presentation
of his theoretical position, however, A.W. Schlegel was less
speculative than other German philosophers. But as Benjamin notes, this
is the result of a conscious decision to make room for a more critical
approach, which renders Schlegel's position surprisingly modern
(Benjamin, 118). Thus, in a mixture of pride and censure, Schlegel
frequently notes how German authors are more speculative than practical
(LDA, 16 and 440). Indeed, his aesthetical essays can be seen
as a comment on and criticism of those more speculative Germanic
approaches in which the particular work of art and the artist seem to
be relegated to a secondary level.

F.W.J. Schelling (the most Romantic of the German idealist
philosophers) was very much influenced by Schlegel's Jena
lectures, and used them as a basis for the elaboration of his
Lectures on the Philosophy of Art (1802–1804). Although
subject of scholarly debate (Esterhammer, 153), Schlegel's
profound influence on English Romanticism through Coleridge is widely
accepted. In the end, however, Schlegel was quite pessimistic about the
actual influence he had had in his time, and lamented that his efforts
had fallen so far short of his desire to inspire an artistic movement
and define an epoch.

Art is not a mere imitation or representation of nature; art is the
product of a creative force. This principle, embodying a pivotal idea
of the German Romantic aesthetics is also the core of one of A.W.
Schlegel's Berlin lectures published in the Viennese journal,
Prometheus (1808). Re-collected in his Kritische
Schriften (1828) as “Über das Verhältniss der
schönen Kunst zur Natur; Über Täuschung und
Wahrscheinlichkeit; Über Manier und Stil” (On the
Relationship of Art to Nature; On Illusion and Probability; On Style
and Manner), the importance of this essay lies not only in this thesis
(an idea that we also find in other texts of that period, such as
Schelling's 1807 essay Über das Verhältniß
der bildenden Künste zu der Natur (On the Relationship of Visual
Arts to Nature), but also in the way Schlegel developed his
argument.

In this text, Schlegel argues in favor of a modern, i.e. Romantic
art theory, in opposition to the representationalist and mimetic
doctrines that go back to Aristotle's Poetics and
conceive the work of the artist as that of a craftsman copying the
beauty of nature (Abrams, 48). But his critique of the classicist
formula ‘art imitates nature’ was accompanied by a careful
analysis of the different meanings the term ‘nature’ had
come to assume within aesthetic discourses. This philological and
historical approach is distinctive of Schlegel's writings and
lends intelligibility and clarity to the texts without eroding their
philosophical sharpness.

Undoubtedly, the Romantic notion of art goes hand in hand with a
reevaluation of the concept of nature. Schlegel argues that, from a
philosophical point of view, everything participates in an ongoing
process of creation, whereas, from an empirical point of view, natural
things are conceived as if they were dead, fixed and independent from
the whole. This means that, in its purest and philosophical sense,
nature is not perceptible in the same way the worldly objects are.
However, unlike Schelling with his intellectual intuition or
intellektuelle Anschauung, Schlegel did not develop an
elaborate theory to give account of this different form of perception;
he succinctly argued that the comprehension of nature's true
essence is more like a presentiment (ahnen) or an
aesthetic contemplation, than like scientific knowledge. In order to
realize this Romantic notion of nature, one needs to comprehend or
rather feel oneself as an organic whole. One needs to achieve
self-awareness and to recognize oneself as forming part of a larger
unity. Indeed, this resort to a non-theoretical or non-discursive plane
as an essential constituent of human comprehension was also important
in Schlegel's philosophy of language, which he already expounded
in his Letters on Poetry, Meter and Language (Briefe
über Poesie, Sylbemaß und Sprache) in 1795.

In any case, the philosophical or Romantic notion of nature as an
unfathomable unity and creative force which cannot be seen nor touched,
and which is obviously a direct response to some of the many questions
raised by Kant's three Critiques, is not to be
understood as a mere intellection, an empty chimera: Nature is the
productive force pulsing in all living beings. For Schlegel, Nature is
organic in the sense that it is an organized and organizing principle,
granting intelligence to the totality of existing beings. It is a
creative force that produces independent living things, the life of
which does not need any external mechanism to keep its autonomy, for it
only depends on its inner, natural power to live. In this point
Schlegel mentions the astrological doctrines that claim that even the
tiniest atom is a mirror of the universe. The idea of Nature mirroring
itself in each and every living organism is characteristic both of
German Idealism and German Romanticism. The difference between human
beings and other animals, plants or mineral structures is that, (1)
human beings are able to understand the fact that they, as an organism,
mirror Nature's organic structure; and furthermore, (2) they
are capable of reproducing nature's creativity through art, as
well as reflecting upon this fact. This reasoning induced Schlegel to
define human genius and his/her poetical creativity as a whole (i.e.
art and language) as the capability of producing a world within a world
(Müller-Vollmer, 317); a definition which is most tangible in
dramatic literature.

Schlegel's criticism of the physicalists' conception of
nature is surely the result of a very specific aesthetic perspective.
But this particular viewpoint enabled him to reinterpret the old
formula ‘art imitates nature’, in such a way as to grasp
not only the true essence of art, but also its most fundamental
principle. Indeed, once we conceive of nature as an organic whole,
constantly becoming and transforming itself, then Schlegel's
paradoxical determination “art should imitate
nature” (SW III, 306) becomes quite coherent. The deficiency of
the formula does not lie in the idea itself, but in the meaning we give
to it. In a very precise sense, art imitates nature, because in his/her
creativity, the genuine artist (i.e. the Romantic artist) also
seeks to produce an organic whole and thereby embody an eternal truth.
For Schlegel, it is only through art and through everything that art
signifies, that man is capable of attaining that seemingly
lost unity.

However, Schlegel was also very aware of the fact that, if art was
the embodiment of an eternal truth, of absolute beauty, this indirectly
meant that it was not Beauty itself. This is also why he
emphasized that each work of art is the expression of a certain
longing, a craving for the recreation of that very unity experienced
through the “spiritual feeling (geistige
Anschauung)[2]
of Nature”
(SW III, 307). Indeed, the idea of longing or Sehnsucht is
essential in Schlegel's account of Romanticism and must be
understood in relation to the difference between ancient and modern
art, which also was the structuring principle and, in a sense,
constituted the real object of Schlegel's analysis in his
Lectures on Dramatic Art. This opposition may be summarized as
follows: whereas ancient poetry is plastic, sensual, harmonious and,
overall, a poetry of enjoyment of the present; modern poetry is a
poetry of desire and longing (Sehnsucht), hovering between the
idealizations of a remote past and an unknown future (LDA, 9).
According to Schlegel, these differences encompass every sphere of
reality and every form of art, and are on the whole the result of a
historical event, namely the establishment of Christianity.

Thus, as F.W.J. Schelling had done in his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Art of 1803, Schlegel presents the passage from
paganism to Christianity as the historical realization of an
insurmountable division between the subject and the object, between
consciousness and nature. Christianity, he argues, awakened the
consciousness of the internal rupture or fundamental discord between
the finite and the infinite which, in Schlegel's analysis, is
constitutive of modernity. In other words, for Schlegel, modernity
arises from the painful realization of an insurmountable fissure, and
the subsequent insight that real happiness can never be attained, i.e.
“that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and
that every mortal enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary
deception” (LDA, 9). As a result, in Schlegel's view, to
understand modern and especially Romantic literature means to
understand art as the eternal longing for the reconciliation of this
fissure between the subject and the universe, the finite and the
infinite or the divine. Both the realization of the insurmountable
fissure as well as the longing for its reconciliation are part of a
particular way of experiencing nature, the self and the infinite.

Schlegel uses the term ‘Romantic’ to denote the very
specific historical and stylistic discrepancy between German and modern
art on the one hand, and ancient and classicist art on the other.
Schlegel considered that German culture, which he defined as having a
natural inclination to the Romantic (LDA, 439), was indebted to all the
cultures which preceded it. But he specifically laid the roots of the
so-called ‘Romantic spirit’ in chivalry, i.e. in the union
of the heroism of the northern conquerors with the humanistic
principles of Christianity. Schlegel associated chivalry and the Middle
Ages in general with a certain form of purity that manifests itself (1)
in a more spiritual understanding of love and female worth, to the
extent that one could talk of a fusion between the metaphysical longing
for the infinite (or God) and the erotic longing for a woman; and (2)
in a ‘heroic’ morality, which, in a certain sense, evokes
the severity of Kantian ethics. It is a morality “that
never calculated consequences, but consecrated unconditionally certain
principles of action” (LDA, 8). On the other hand, though,
Schlegel's genealogy of the ‘Romantic’ would be
incomprehensible without paying attention to his openness to and
interest in other cultures and languages. Thus, the ‘Romantic
spirit’ is also found in the works of Shakespeare, and sought in
the spirit of romance cultures and languages, which, for Schlegel, are
the result of a fusion between Latin and Teutonic, in a similar way as
German Romanticism “is the fruit of the union of the
peculiarities of the northern with the fragments of antiquity”
(LDA, 5).

In the same way as Nature, or to be precise, the true
experience of Nature cannot be reduced to its mere physical or
external manifestation, a work of art and its contemplation of it are,
also, more than just the simple perception or the analysis of its
appearance. Therefore, in order to endure the shifting modes of time,
the work of art needs to have something more profound than just a
beautiful form, as a flower needs its roots and cannot survive long
without them. Conversely, for Schlegel, as for Schelling or Novalis,
the attempt to understand the work of art as the result of the
conscious decisions of the artist alone would also be misleading,
because there is always an unconscious element in every artistic
creation. The work of art is a result of both conscious and unconscious
forces. In other words, the artist's intention is
irrelevant for the artistic product, and hence, must remain irrelevant
in the evaluation of his work. In his Lectures on Dramatic
Art, Schlegel defines a genius as being capable of the
“almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of
excellence” (LDA, 5), and in an Athenaeum fragment he
claimed that “it is a distinguishable mark of poetical genius to
know a great deal more than he knows he knows” (SW VIII, 15).
This does not mean that any sign of an ‘unconscious’ choice
in the production of art is a sign of genius; what is characteristic
about the great artist is that his/her ‘unconscious’
choices seem attributable to a higher, divine and conscious
force. The extent to which the artist is capable of transcending
his/her more or less involuntary particularities, i.e. the extent to
which his/her unconscious choices seem to derive from a higher instance
(consciously choosing the highest degree of excellence) determines the
difference between style and mannerism. When the work
of art appears as if all its elements had been consciously
chosen by a power above the artist, it has style; when the
artist has not transcended his/her individuality, then s/he is
categorized as a mannerist artist (SW III, 309–312).

The essence of a work of art, the principle that all real
works of art have in common and which makes them be more than a mere
accumulation of countable elements, is what Schlegel called the
poetical. Consequently, the ability to grasp whatever is
truly poetical in a specific work of art set the basis for his
methodological procedure in his art criticism. For Schlegel, a
criterion for evaluating a work of art is its capacity to extend itself
“beyond the limits of reality into the region of a creative
fancy” (LDA, 107–108). On the other hand, the poetical aspect of
a work of art depends on its capacity to mirror and to present
(darstellen) eternally true ideas (LDA, 18). But, as
in many aesthetic texts from this period, it is not always obvious
which ‘ideas’ the work of art must seek to mirror. It seems
these ‘ideas’ should be understood in a Platonic sense, as
they generally refer to great values or great ideals such as beauty,
greatness and goodness.

However, and partly due to his reluctance to consider the
artist's intentionality as being decisive in the comprehension of
the work of art (which in some way prefigures the late Romantic ideal
of l'art pour l'art), Schlegel did not underline a
necessary moral purpose in aesthetic objects, as Schiller had done. And
yet, for Schlegel, this did not imply that the contemplation and
understanding of art should lose its moral aura. Quite to the contrary,
for Schlegel, art has the power to elevate us above our ordinary
encounters with the world, above the sorrows and daily troubles of
life. This is why he argued that the purpose of art could not be a mere
imitation or reduplication of the world as it is, because in
this case, apart from the fact that music, dance, architecture and so
many other art forms become totally inexplicable, the best works of art
would be the ones which deceive the most, in the sense that the viewer
would find himself prevented from contemplating the work of art as
a work of art. Clearly, if the purpose of art were to replicate
nature (understood as a collection of things) the aesthetic objects
would have no particular interest other than ornamentation. But, for
Schlegel, both the contemplation as well as the production of art
should be seen as the result of a creative activity.

In accordance with these theoretical assumptions, Schlegel was very
negative about the naturalistic neoclassicist tendencies in art.
Schlegel praised the wholeness and the poetical unity as well as the
originality in a work of art. For Schlegel, the magic of a work of art
is that it brings us into a different world, with all its own internal
coherence, and this is why it needs to become organic and complete unto
itself. Therefore, its purpose should not be to reflect the real world
with naturalism, but rather to create its own world, which could never
be a question of applying a set of rules and principles to a particular
matter (paintings, words, marble), such as classicist principles seemed
to do. The search for naturalism and plausibility, in an attempt at
producing the most true and real representation of reality, makes art
lose its greatness, beauty and wonder.

Consequently, in his Lectures on Dramatic Art, Schlegel
praised the use of masks in theatrical representations as well as those
performers who managed to create an emotional distance between
themselves, the audience and the role they were playing. Once more, art
is not about deceiving or hiding, but about the production or the
creation of a world within a world. This also explains Schlegel's
admiration of Old Comedy, because in this case the spectator is
constantly forced to remain aware of the experience in which s/he is
partaking, namely the experience of the difference between reality and
illusion. A similar reconsideration of Comedy was also the basis for
other contemporary authors in Schlegel's circle, such as Ludwig
Tieck with his version of the 17th century fairy tale
Der gestiefelte Kater (Puss in Boots). Schlegel
stresses that, in contrast to tragedy, the author of which needs to
remain invisible lest his/her fictional world should disintegrate; in
comedy, the gap between the different levels of reality and illusion,
or rather, the very disintegration of the unity of the story becomes
the center of the play. As Schlegel puts it, in Old Comedy: “the
whole production was one entire jest within itself” (LDA, 108).
In Aristophanes' plays, the chorus, which regularly interrupts the
course of the play to address the audience with reference to the
story, the author and the people from the audience alike
(parabasis), virtually destroys all the elements and
characteristics of tragedy: its seriousness as well as its harmonious
unity is systematically parodied. Not only the scenes, not only the
poetry, but also the tragic composition, the music, acting and
dancing, were object of a hilarious distortion. However, for Schlegel,
this did not make comedy dependent on tragedy; on the contrary, he
affirms it to be “a species of poetry as independent and
original as tragedy itself” (LDA, 108). In fact, A.W. Schlegel's
characterization of the distinction between the character of Old
Comedy and Greek tragedy would become a central reference in literary
criticism.

Among all the different artistic manifestations, Schlegel considered
dramatic poetry to be “the most entertaining of all
diversions” (LDA, 12). The fundamental reason for dramatic
poetry's being so engaging, as Schlegel points out, lies in the
mimicry that is always involved in theatrical representations. Schlegel
maintained that all works of art, and in particular, all theatrical
representations, are the expression of the idiosyncrasies of the
country where they are produced. And although he succinctly suggested
that the existence of a theatrical tradition may be seen as a symbol of
a special intellectual and political environment, he also indicated
that the enjoyment of mimicry per se is somehow constitutive of human
beings (Flaherty, 195). For Schlegel, children's delight in
imitating their relatives is also explanatory of man's basic
psychological predisposition to mimicry (LDA, 18); a disposition
without which man would not be able to enter the linguistic, let alone
the poetical and creative, phase of his development (SW VII, 117).
Dramatic poetry, he argued, is the representation of an
‘important’ action, namely an action that has been purged
of all the petty and unnecessary details of real life; it is the
performance of a morally and intellectually exemplary action through
dialogue. Indeed, to place dramatic poetry in the highest rank amongst
the arts does not make Schlegel unique. What does render him quite
distinctive, however, is the argument he gives, namely that it produces
the maximum enjoyment. This certainly contrasts with Schiller's
moralizing views. Schlegel was very aware of the necessity for a play
to be interesting and exciting for the audience: the greatness of a
play has to do with the way in which it creates a certain tension or
conflict that involves the audience. But, what makes dramatic poetry
different from a mere pantomime, what really elevates it above other
human activities is, once again, its poetical element, i.e. its
capacity to mirror an idea or eternal truth. Ultimately, this is also
what determines the difference between tragedy and comedy. The tragic
tone is given through a sincere melancholy, a longing for and accepting
of a “destiny soaring above this earthly life”, whereas the
main characteristic of comedy is its “forgetfulness of all
discouraging considerations” (LDA, 24). For Schlegel, the aim of
tragedy is not “to purify the passions by pity and terror”
(LDA, 43), as Aristotle had said, but to elevate us “to the most
dignified view of humanity” (LDA, 112). In fact, Schlegel's
analysis of Greek tragedy and his sharp rejection of Aristotle's theory
of tragedy were extremely influential in other authors such as
Schelling and Nietzsche.

In his Lectures on Dramatic Art Schlegel was very critical
towards the present state of German theatre (LDA, 438). However, apart
from Shakespeare, Calderón, with their ironic way of mixing the
tragic with the comic (LDA, 175), and the ancient Greeks, Schlegel also
praised Lessing, Schiller and Goethe for having “redeemed the
German theatre from its long continued mediocrity” (LDA,
424).

In his influential Letters on Poetry from 1795, addressed
to a fictional Amalie, Schlegel discusses the possible origins
of language; a theme, to which he would later return in his Jena and
Berlin lectures. In his disputation, Schlegel was taking part in an old
philosophical debate which had formed two opposite hypotheses (Behler,
2002, 124–128). The two basic and mutually exclusive positions
maintained, on the one hand, as Schlegel portrays them, that human
language must have originated as a transcription, representation or
imitation of external objects; and on the other, that in its
origin language must have been purely sensual, i.e. a mere form of
expression of emotions through sounds. Thus, either directly or
indirectly, Schlegel was referring to authors such as Condillac,
Hemsterhuys, Karl Phillip Moritz, August Ferdinand Bernhardi, Fichte,
Herder and Rousseau. However, in contrast to Herder (and even his own
brother Friedrich) for whom the debate about the origin of language was
primarily a debate about whether its origin was natural or divine, for
Schlegel, the real question at stake was the extent to which the nature
of language could be reduced to and explained in purely rationalistic
terms. Furthermore, in these letters Schlegel implicitly questions the
possibility of attaining absolute knowledge solely through theory, i.e.
attending only to a scientific rationale that necessarily excludes more
metaphorical and intuitive approaches, which prefer to see everything
“under the mysterious light of twilight” (SW VII, 110). For
Schlegel, the real problem lay in the presupposed exclusivity of both
alternatives (Behler, 2000, 126).

The fact that Schlegel entered into an already existing debate and
that he aimed to dissolve it by reconciling both perspectives, makes
his decision to present his position in an epistolary form, mixing
different styles of argumentation, much more interesting and valuable;
especially if we take into consideration that Schlegel actually
modified his last Letter after having received a commentary,
through a missive, from Friedrich Schiller (Behler, 2002, 126).
Schlegel's letters were indeed an example of what he claimed in
them, namely that the only plausible theory on the origin of language
had to take into account both its irrational elements (i.e. the purely
emotional, imaginative, sensual and most radically communicative
aspects of language) and its rational characteristic (i.e. a system of
signs based on convention), while admitting that on the whole, the
origin of language remains as secret and inexplicable as the origin of
humanity itself (SW VII, 111). In brief: for Schlegel, as for Novalis
or Schleiermacher, language could not be reduced to a mere system of
signs and any account of the origin of language had to be able to
integrate the two apparently opposite aspects of it.

For Schlegel, language constitutes, in its most elementary
conception, the basic means of communication of immediate feelings, and
therefore represents a dimension that is also present in other animals.
Children learn to move their tongues, Schlegel notes, even before they
learn to use their feet (SW VII, 117). But in human language, this
communicative capability is also the tool that enables man to surpass a
purely naturalistic or animalistic sphere. Indeed, for Schlegel, as for
Herder, language is the quintessence of human beings. Language is our
first and most fundamental contact with the world: (1) it is the true
condition of possibility of our orientation in the world; and (2) it
provides us with the unique opportunity of communicating with other
people and of developing subjectivity. Moreover, for Schlegel, the
world as such only makes sense through or within language. It is
through language that we tear ourselves away from nature and constitute
ourselves as a subject. Language is what takes us beyond ourselves; it
is the “magical power” that leaves room for the
incorporeal, unphysical in us (SW VII, 139).

Schlegel accepts the idea that, in its beginning, language was
probably a direct expression of feelings and emotions through sounds.
The origin of language, he argues, must have been very close to the
cry of animals and the singing of birds, an idea which he supports
with the fact that we all began to use our voices by screaming (SW
VII, 115). But to this basic point, Schlegel also adds the idea of
rhythm. In his letters, he suggests that the rhythmic
character of language is as old as poetry, and moreover, as old as
human life. The oldest or the first language, he argues, must
have been indivisible from tones, rhythms, music and dance. Poetry, or
rather rhythm, he affirms, is thus essential to language
itself. Indeed, it would be impossible to eliminate rhythm from
language (SW VII, 108). In other words, Schlegel maintains that, in its
origin, language was poetry (SW VII, 104). Most important, though, is
that Schlegel “does not limit the realm of sensuality and feeling
to an early stage in the formation of language” (Behler, 2000,
81). For Schlegel, this more sensual aspect of language is always
present: however civilized a people may be, they cannot avoid
using different tones and rhythms to express themselves (SW VII, 115).
Each utterance, each sentence is spoken with a certain rhythm, each
word also carries the way in which it is said, the way in
which it refers to the world, and all these elements constitute an
aspect of language, for they help to establish the ultimate meaning of
the words. This, as Schlegel points out, becomes most obvious once we
realize that, in order to comprehend the emotions that are being
transmitted through a particular speech, one does not need to
understand the words literally (SW VII, 114).

Thus, for Schlegel, language not only was poetry in its origin, but
language is essentially poetry. Or as he would later claim in
his Berlin lectures: “language is an ongoing becoming and
continually changing, never ending poem of human kind” (1884, I,
388). Thus, the nature of language should be understood, not as a more
or less automatic response to the necessities the world imposes upon
us, but as a creative, poetical ability. For Schlegel, the
characterization of language as poetry is the only way a theory of
language could give account of language's inherent spontaneity
and creativity. In a certain way, Schlegel was reinterpreting Herder
through Fichte, emphasizing Fichte's idea of man's
self-possession and his relation to the world as an active and not a
passive one. This also explains the importance Schlegel gave to the
role of the poet (and to the literature translator) in the development
of the language of a nation. For Schlegel, as for Wilhelm von Humboldt,
the task of the poet and also of that of the translator is to broaden
the signifying and expressive capacity of a language. The poet,
Schlegel says in his 1796 text The Works of Homer by Voss, is
the force that renders language alive, which nevertheless does not mean
that s/he may introduce any kind of changes: language's
malleability also has its grammatical and philological limits (KS, I,
75–76 and 116–117).

In his philosophical account of the fact that language is constantly
changing and moving from lower to higher stages, Schlegel operates with
two very different ways of approaching language, which, at the same
time, reveal the co-existence of two opposite but equally constitutive
forces in the development of a language: the artist's
language-shaping efforts and the grammarian's judicial function
(SW VII, 117). In this way, Schlegel is somehow anticipating
Saussure's extremely influential differentiation between
langue and parole. For Schlegel, as for Saussure or
Deleuze, the tension between language as an ordered and stable whole,
and language as the subject of a more or less arbitrary, free and
creative development, is what makes language something alive.

In a similar way, Schlegel affirms that our encounters with the
world are always poetical, in the sense that they cannot be merely
receptive, but also creative. Reality exists through language, or in
other words, we always relate to the world metaphorically. This also
means that there cannot be an ‘absolute’ (i.e. an
absolutely true) way of referring to the external world, for we do not
see the world as it is, but always in relation to ourselves.
Schlegel's theory of language is thus intrinsically connected to
his theory of mythology. Both in his Jena and in his Berlin lectures,
Schlegel stressed the fact that the experience of an existing totality has a
mythological basis without which the experience itself would be
impossible (Behler, 1992, 77–78). Once again, Schlegel stressed the
idea that mythology is not merely a phase of human rationality but is
part of our being in the world. It is a structural principle of human
intellectual activity, the purest rational activity being a
mythological one: be it in art, sciences or in our daily activities, we
always relate to the world metaphorically.

In his letters, Schlegel maintained that language is the “most
wonderful creation of human beings' poetical talent”,
because it is through language that human nature is able to reflect
upon itself (SW VII, 104). Thus, Schlegel's theory of language is
at the same time a theory of the origin of poetry, which also explains
his predilection for poetry among all the different artistic
manifestations. Thanks to this comprehension of the poetical nature of
language, Schlegel can explain poetry as the highest and freest of all
arts, because it creates its own objects. Indeed, if language is
defined as poetry, then poetry itself becomes “poetry in
poetry” (Behler, 125). The only difference between language and
poetry, he argued, is that the poet is aware of his/her poetical
creativity: s/he consciously decides to create a dream; whereas in
ordinary speech, the subject is unaware of his/her poetical and
imaginative activity (1884, I, 275). In this way, Schlegel was clearly
anticipating Nietzsche's On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense.

Although Schlegel himself denied that he had developed any
translation theory (IB, I, 256), many of his texts are devoted to the
analysis of existing translations (such as Voss's and
Bürger's translations of Homer) as well as to the commentary
on his own work as translator. Schlegel was almost certainly influenced
by the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder, but his decision to avoid
the elaboration of a systematic translation theory can be interpreted
as the result of a very precise theoretical position, namely that each
text requires a different procedure for its translation. As he affirmed
in the commentary to his Bhagavad-Gita translation, it all depends on
the relation between the two languages (IB, I, 256). In other words,
for Schlegel, a translation theory as such is uninteresting unless it
involves the exposition of the actual work undertaken with the texts,
i.e. with the original text as well as with all the existing
translations. Consequently, Schlegel's commentary and his
suggestions concerning Voss's translation of Homer are
accompanied by a very detailed analysis of the Greek text together with
a comparative study of Voss's and Bürger's versions.
Likewise, in his Über die Bhagavad-Gita, Schlegel
analyzes all the different ways in which a particular word (such as
‘yoga’ or ‘dharma’) has been translated,
creating thus a history of the translation. And although his
commentaries appear as a work in progress, they show a very precise and
carefully conceived methodology which was mostly valuable for other
translators and translation theorists.

For Schlegel, a good translation is not necessarily a literal
translation; the translator must be able to translate the spirit of the
text. He must follow the letter, but he must also be able to
“capture some of the innumerable, indescribable marvels that do
not reside in the letter, but float above it like a breath of
spirit!” (SW VII, 39). Thus, in an 1838 letter to Reimen,
Schlegel explains that the aim of a translator should be to
“provide those who have no access to the original with as pure
and uninterrupted appreciation of the work as possible” (SW VII,
287). Anticipating Humboldt's distinction between the
‘foreign’ (das Fremde) and
‘strangeness’ (die Fremdheit) – which he
introduced in the preface of his translation of the Agamemnon
from 1816 — Schlegel also emphasizes that all translations
should avoid converting foreign texts into strange texts (Berman, 154).
As he had said in his Works of Homer by Voss, in order to
translate a text from a different culture, the translator needs to
maintain the text's naturalness; s/he cannot convert it into
something strange, there is no necessity to violate the language, to
invent a new language (SW VII, 116). In fact, Schlegel's
principal concern as a translator seems to be to enable the
assimilation and comprehension of otherness. In this sense, Schlegel
also believed that German culture and language provided much better
conditions for good translations than other languages, and he
criticized the way in which especially French translations tended to
paraphrase passages from foreign texts in order to make them seem more
French (KS, I, 75–76, see also Berman, 36). As Antoine Berman notes,
what Schlegel reproached in Voss's translation of Homer is
precisely “to have created a much too ‘strange’
pidgin of Greek and German” (Berman, 154).

Although many of Schlegel's remarks may seem self-evident and
elementary, they did not appear so at the time. In fact they are the
result of a very precise way of understanding language. Indeed
Schlegel's translation theories are very much connected to his
philosophy of language. Thus, it is within his explanatory observations
about the difficulty of translating Sanskrit terms that we find a
philosophical theory about the genealogy of abstract significance. All
abstract concepts, he argues, are the result of a progressive growing
apart between an original sensual denotation and its future abstract
meanings (IB, II, 248–258). Therefore, the translator needs to make a
decision between (a) finding a more or less neutral term in his/her own
language that has a similar meaning to the original, sensual meaning
(in this case s/he needs to explain the particular use of this word); and
(b) using all the meanings that the original word has been attached to.
The problem in the latter case is that one meaning does not relate to
the other, and, what is worse, the translation loses the cohesion
between all the different meanings, so the reader is not able to know
in which way these different meanings are bound.

Schlegel describes the task of the translator as a voluntary and
embarrassing slavery (IB, I, 254). It is never gratifying, because the
more s/he tries to make the best translation, the more s/he realizes how
impossible his/her task is. And yet, Schlegel's translations of
Shakespeare are still read today.

The Romantic vision of the great artist as an exceptional individual,
an unrepeatable genius, creator of his/her own rules, of his/her own
style, leaves the figure of the philosopher and essayist in a rather
difficult position. The art critic has a very different task from that
of the artist. As a critic, Schlegel conceives his activity as an
educational and moral one, something which he definitely does not
demand from the artist. Certainly, in order to appreciate correctly
the work of the artist, in order to avoid being dazed by superficial
beauty, the art critic also has to have an inner feeling, a certain
genius. But his task is not to create, but to comprehend and to
educate the public in their taste, to enable them to value the new,
modern artistic productions with a profound understanding of their
significance. For, “what ennobles human nature [is] to recognize
and respect whatever is beautiful and grand under those external
modifications which are necessary to their existence, and which
sometimes even seem to disguise them. There is no monopoly of poetry
for certain ages and nations” (LDA, 2). In Schlegel's oeuvre the
Romantic ideals are in fact embedded in an enlightenment project.

Thus in the 1809 preface to the publication of his Lectures on
Dramatic Art, Schlegel argued that his main purpose was not so
much to transmit an indifferent account of the history of dramatic
poetry, but most importantly to “develop those ideas which ought
to guide us in our estimate” (LDA, vii). His objective was to
liberate his listeners and readers from what he calls a
“despotism in taste” (LDA, 2), that is, to release them,
both from their provincial prejudices towards unknown cultures and from
the new tendencies developing in German literature. He wanted to
prepare the German public for the (future) German Romantic theatre.

In a similar fashion, Schlegel argued that in order to appreciate
art productions from past cultures and remote nations, an acquaintance
not only with the actual work of art is indispensable, but also with
its historical and cultural background: it is imperative to understand
the peculiarities of their culture and history as a whole. The profound
comprehension of History is the basis for any comprehension of art and
languages, which necessarily bears a direct relationship with the
historical conditions circumscribing it (KS, I, x). Schlegel
consequently introduced in all of his lectures historical, social and
cultural observations; because for him, the aim of the critic was,
primarily, to reconcile the division between theory and experience,
i.e. between a philosophical and a historical approach. Such was the
balance Schlegel sought to achieve in his lectures between what would
be a purely theoretical comprehension of tragedy and the consideration
of the theatre as such, with all the historical, architectural and
cultural characteristics that conditioned the actual performance of the
play.

The critic of art and history needs to be a connoisseur in
the strictest sense of the word, for he must be able to explain the
actual state of humanity from its most remote past. He needs to
distance himself sufficiently from his own time in order to be able to
understand and judge it. The true critic must have a
“universality of mind” so that he may leave aside his
“personal predilections” (LDA, 5). Schlegel conceived his
lectures as a true critique, and many years later, he still
considered that this is what made his approach in his Lectures on
Dramatic Art and Literature unique (KS, I, xiii).

In the preface to the publication of his critical writings from
1828, Schlegel explains that the difficulty of his task as an art
critic lies not so much in the critique or the judgment itself, or in
the laying out of the proper argument in demonstration of his views, as
in finding, i.e. creating the right concepts with which to
express the effect and the impressions generated by a specific work of
art (KS, I, xii). The genius of the critic is that he is able to use
the word ‘Romantic’ in such a way that it may express the
essence of an epoch. And, although Schlegel did not believe he actually
had a big influence on the German public, by 1828 he did remark that a
shift of taste had taken place in Europe, a shift that showed how the
Romantic ideals had in fact widely pervaded European audiences.

Schlegel's writings made Shakespeare one of the most
universally known and revered authors in Germany and, to a great
extent, also in England. Through his translations and essays he
intended to make foreign literary traditions and literary works
accessible to the German public, but he also thought that the opposite
was necessary. That is, Schlegel understood that his task as an art
critic was also to defend and disseminate German culture, within
Germany and throughout Europe.

Indeed, Schlegel's preoccupation with the historical and
cultural diversities had two different, even opposite, consequences. On
the one hand it made Schlegel's approach to different cultures
and their artistic production much more tolerant, because he was aware
of the fact that one needs to immerse oneself in their culture in order
to grasp the universal or poetical nature of the work of art and avoid
a provincial attitude. In fact, Schlegel liked to think of himself as a
citizen of the world. But, on the other hand, it led him to harbor a
certain nationalistic sentiment, which he projected both abroad and to
the German literati. So, as well as restoring German culture (many of
his writings can be regarded as a manifesto of German Romanticism and
German philosophy), he also encouraged his fellow countrymen, in a
highly patriotic tone, to become deeply national and historical and to
depict “what Germans of olden times were and what they should
become again”, lest they should lose their “unity as
Germans” (LDA., pp. 441). Schlegel believed that for the true
potential of Romantic literature to be realized in Germany, Germans
needed to regain an interest in the great events of their history and
in their identity as an independent nation (Carlson, 143).

In his late essay Abriß von den Europäischen
Verhältnissen der Deutschen Literatur (1825), written for an
English public, he repeats an idea he had also defended in his
Lectures on Dramatic Art, namely that German literature was
young because of the historical evolution of the German language, and
not because of its quality (LDA, 421, SW VIII, 207). Schlegel fervently
defended German authors (such as Klopstock, Lessing, Winkelmann,
Wieland, Goethe or Herder), as well as German philosophers, from the
English accusations of being abstract and obscure (SW VIII, 212). He
also claimed that Germans were the most cosmopolitan and intellectual
leaders of European culture, and that Germany had reached its maturity,
its autonomy, and hence its freedom (SW VIII, 214). This is why, for
Schlegel, Germany had a central role in the development of European
culture: in the recuperation of the Roman and Greek cultures, which
were the very foundations of Europe. The evidence of this
‘superiority’ would lie in the development of natural
sciences, philosophy and the critical interpretation of classical texts
(SW VII, 214–217). In short, A.W. Schlegel's concern became more
and more a problem of national identity (Schmelling, 35–36).

After the disastrous consequences of German nationalism during the
20th century, and the fact that “it is also a common
view that ‘political Romanticism’, in its regard for
organic community, was a precursor to Nazism” (Black, 32), such
‘Romantic’ nationalistic statements are not received
without a certain apprehension. However, without trying to solve the
ambivalent character of the Romantic political program, it is important
to note how these very statements show that Schlegel was not an
impartial critic. He too was in some way trapped in what he called the
Romantic spirit, despite his efforts to contemplate art, history and
society from a neutral perspective. In explaining the spirit of the
Romantic, Schlegel himself is being very Romantic. The
very division he made between the ancient and the modern, as well as
his views of Shakespeare, Aristophanes or the Greeks as a people who
were “conscious of no wants, and aspired at no higher perfection
than that which they could actually attain by the exercise of their own
faculties” (LDA, 9), were inevitably influenced by his own
time.

A.W. Schlegel's writings show a great preoccupation with and
interest in the perspective of the ‘other’: women, children
and, above all, other cultures. He constantly reminds the reader about
the necessity, in critical thought, of creating a link between theory
and practical experience or historical knowledge. This enables him to
defend the idea that two totally different works of art can be great
and admirable, not only in spite of their differences, but because
of them. In fact, although Schlegel's Lectures on
Dramatic Art can be seen as a plea for what he calls modern or
Romantic poetry and culture in general (“the feeling of the
moderns is, upon the whole, more intense, their fancy more incorporeal,
and their thoughts more contemplative”, LDA, 9), in contrast to
other authors, he is always very careful not to judge modern works of
art according to their similarities or dissimilarities with ancient
ones. It was not by chance that Schlegel should be the first author to
introduce the idea of a comparative literature.

The emphasis on the opposition between ancient and modern art, and
its parallel to the antagonism between Christianity and Greek pagan
mythology, are recurring assumptions in 19th century
aesthetics. But Schlegel's purpose is not to conceptualize a
particular canon of beauty, but much more, as a means of elevating
oneself above all partial views, to find an approach that may enable
the comprehension and enjoyment of the different ways in which art is
manifested throughout history. Thus, Schlegel is taking to its highest
point the 19th century idealist principle according to which
art is the “power of creating what is beautiful and representing
(darstellen) it to the human eye and ear” (LDA, 3) as
well as the idea that “poetry, as the fervid expression of our
whole being, must assume a new and peculiar form in different
ages” (LDA, 29).

The experience of difference also becomes an important element in
his critique of art. Schlegel clearly positions himself against modern
critics, who consider the mixture of reality and imitation
“destructive of theatrical illusion” (LDA, 34). Although
not always explicit in his writings, Schlegel constantly stresses the
idea that in the contemplation of a work of art, the spectator must
still perceive the craftedness of the whole; i.e. the difference
between reality and illusion. This is a fundamental element of his
criticism of naturalism and his defense of the use of verse and masks
in theatre. What is more interesting, though, is that the constant
awareness of the difference between reality and illusion (for instance
through irony) also shows the fundamental fragility of difference
itself in a much more compelling way than a rigorous classicist work of
art does. Reality is also an illusion; it also is the result of
creative forces, such as language is.

In this specific sense, Schlegel could be understood as a thinker of
difference in a much more radical way than other philosophers of his
time. Although Schlegel's writings have not been considered as
philosophical as those of other 19th century German
philosophers, his approach to art and its history, and his reflections
on language and cultural differences are much closer to what is
sometimes called a postmodern comprehension of aesthetics than
that of his contemporaries. Indeed, in his characteristically
unpresumptuous style, Schlegel anticipates philosophers such as
Nietzsche, Blumenberg or René Girard.

Behler, Ernst, 2000, “On Truth and Lie in an aesthetical
Sense”, in Revenge of the Aesthetic: The Place of Literature
Theory Today, Michael P. Clark (ed.), Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, pp. 76–93.

Berman, Antoine, 1992, “A.W. Schlegel, The Will to Translate
Everything”, in The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and
Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert, Albany:
State University of New York Press, pp. 129–141.

Nancy, Jean-Luc and Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, 1988, The literary
absolute: the theory of literature in German romanticism, trans.
by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, Albany: State University of
New York Press.